State Courts

A national scandal is brewing in the Big Easy over thousands of people imprisoned without access to lawyers or the courts.

A South Dakota judge has thrown out the attorney general's medical marijuana initiative ballot summary as biased and unfair and replaced it with language of his own crafting.

Grayson County, Texas, is nothing special, just your average heartland county. That's what makes a review of its court cases so revealing.

California prosecutors hope the third time is the charm in their effort to secure a murder conviction against a woman whose infant son had methamphetamine in his blood when he died. She's already serving 10 years for child endangerment.

A Colorado judge has ruled prison officials went too far when they shackled a prisoner to a chair for more than five days in a bid to see if he had swallowed drugs.

Though the US Supreme Court ruled last month that police officers who violate "knock and announce" search warrant rules can use the ill-gotten evidence against defendants, that's not good enough for at least one Vermont judge.

Gov. Schwarzenegger Wednesday signed a bill to substantially alter the state's voter-approved "treatment not jail" ballot measure. One of the authors of the measure immediately filed suit to block the new law from going into effect.

Gov. Frank Murkowski's two-year effort to recriminalize marijuana in Alaska hit another roadblock Monday when a Superior Court judge struck down the part of the law he pushed through the legislature earlier this year.

Legislators and law enforcers should not disrespect the constitutional frameworks intended to limit their power.